Spousal Maintenance

This will depend on your and your spouse’s incomes and your respective income needs or expenditure. The court will expect a party to have taken steps to maximise their income where possible. There may be straightforward things you can consider, such as finding out whether you are eligible for tax credits or notifying the council if your partner has moved out which may reduce your council tax. You age and employability will all be considered.

Just because you earn more money, you won’t necessarily have to make monthly payments to your spouse.

This will vary depending on the circumstances of the case. It may be ordered that you should pay maintenance until the children have reached 18 or for a set period of time to enable your spouse to retrain to seek better employment. Although relatively rare, in some circumstances maintenance can be ordered on a joint lives basis and is therefore payable until either spouse dies.

Although the obligation to pay maintenance automatically stops if your spouse remarries, it does not necessarily stop if your spouse moves in with, or cohabits, with another person. This depends on how your financial agreement is worded. You can apply to the court to have your maintenance payments reduced if you think your spouse’s financial situation has changed. Please contact a member of our team if you would like further advice regarding this.

Yes, if your circumstances have changed, if you can show a need and demonstrate to the court that you have sought to mitigate your circumstances and it is affordable to the payor, you could seek an upward maintenance variation.

If the payments are unaffordable to you as the payor, there is a change in your personal circumstances, such as ill health or redundancy or your income has decreased you could seek a downward maintenance variation.